Monadnock Ledger-Transcript
Published: 12/28/2021 8:03:42 AM
Modified: 12/28/2021 8:03:14 AM
Peterborough became the target of a phishing scam, accidentally transferring $2.3 million to internet scammers.
The scam, which was announced in August, consisted of criminals forging emails to disguise themselves as employees of ConVal and Beck & Bellucci before rerouting payments from the town intended for these organizations.
“It was a really horrible day,” Town Administrator Nicole MacStay previously said of the day she learned of the missing money. “And then it was actually multiple horrible days.”
Although the scam was revealed to residents in August, the first time town officials became concerned was on July 26, when the ConVal district informed them that they had not received their payment of $1.2 million.
The other misdirected transfers occurred on July 9 and Aug. 13, both intended for the contractor Beck & Bellucci and consisting of $528,513 and $585,237 respectively.
In hindsight, the scam began much earlier, with a series of fraudulent emails sent to town officials in the spring posing as outside organizations. Many of the forged emails, MacStay later said, were not from either of the two organizations whose payments ended up being stolen. The emails themselves contained misspellings and other errors that could have been flagged.
The scammers got town employees to change vendor payment routing information so…
